BRITISH POLICY.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20509, 10 January 1935, Page 1

BRITISH POLICY.

No Longer Based on Balance of Power. CAPTAIN EDEN’S STATEMENT. British Official Wireless. (Received January 10, 12.50 p.m.) RUGBY, January 9. Reference was made to the FrancoItalian agreement by Captain Anthony Eden in a speech at Edinburgh last night. He said that the agreement constituted an important contribution to European stability’. He believed that it would result in a marked improvement in the whole outlook for Europe. It was a good start for the New Year, in which much work remained to be done. An almost imperceptible change was taking place and a new order in the world was being evolved. In the years gone by Britain’s foreign policy had often been criticised abroad as being exclusively' concerned with the balance of power. If Britain’s policy was a policy of balance of power, it was only because it seemed to her statesmen at that time the best and, indeed, the only' means of ensuring peace. Now balance of power was no longer Britain’s foreign policy*. Her policy* was now based on the League of Nations and on a policy of collective peace system. There was in truth an immense change in the outlook. Balance of power meant the maintenance of peace by the adjustment of force. The collective peace system meant the abolition of force and the substitution of the authority of the law. That was the immense change which w*as now taking place in foreign affairs. That change was not yet universally . effective, but the British policy was to make it so and in that work lay the significance of their task, which, in importance, had scarcely been paralleled in British history*. It could not be realised in a day. There had been setbacks and there would be others, but gradually progress was being recorded. Last year saw a real advance and he was hopeful that 1935 would see a still further step, perhaps a decisive step, to a new order which would bring peace to the people for all time.